A herd of companies flocked into the crypto-verse this year. Unlike the others, Visa was increasingly embracing the crypto-verse. In another attempt to elevate its presence in the digital world, Visa announced its partnership with Ethereum backed firm, ConsesSys. This time, however, the payments giant laid eyes on central bank-issued digital currencies [CBDC].
CBDC’s seem to be the latest interest of governments across the globe. The onset of this plunge towards digitalization was certainly started by China. The country’s fast-paced development urged other countries to roll out their own CBDC. In order to address the ongoing fervor surrounding CBDCs, Visa plans to roll out a “CBDC sandbox.”
The technology curated by ConsenSys and Visa would aid in the distribution process of the CBDC. The imminent tech would focus on bridging the gap between CBDCs and traditional financial entities.
Visa to be the first to integrate CBDCs?
There’s always chaos while a new technology enters the system. To smooth things out, Visa’s “CBDC sandbox” would allow banks and governments to carry out experiments regarding the same.
The forthcoming tech allows central banks to design their respective digital currency on ConsenSys’ Quorum. On this network, banks can register the monetary as well as the governance rules. Soon after this, Visa’s infrastructure would be employed to carry out the distribution of the currency. This would mean that customers would be able to use their CBDC-linked Visa card all across the world or anywhere that Visa is accepted.
Speaking about the same, Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, said,
“We think that stablecoins and CBDCs will coexist in the future and there’ll be a number of different approaches to creating products based on that.”
Payment firms and crypto
Major payment firms like PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa have been going all-in on crypto. Speaking about CBDCs in particular, MasterCard rolled out a CBDC testing platform back in 2020.
Visa has made sure to maintain a stronghold over the crypto market. The payments giant has teamed up with over 60 cryptocurrency exchanges that include, Coinbase, Binance, FTX, Crypto.com in order to help customers purchase crypto and spend it without any major heckles.
More recently, the payments processor rolled out a global crypto advisory service. This forum was solely concentrated on providing knowledge to its clients as well as merchants’ knowledge about crypto.
Addressing Visa’s interest in crypto, Sheffield previously said,
“At the end of the day, we want to serve as a bridge connecting the crypto ecosystem with our global network of 80 million merchant locations and more than 15,000 financial institutions.”
Additionally, the payments platform jumped on the NFT bandwagon as well. The firm made an exorbitant purchase of the CryptoPunk NFT for $150,000.